Watching History Unfold

What does watching football mean to you? Really think about that for a moment…..millions of the world’s population takes part in this past time, but what draws us to the game in such vast numbers? Whether it’s a documentary charting the history of the game, a youtube highlight reel of a particular player or even a live televised match, football has an innate ability to captivate & engage an audience across the globe. This was evident in this summer’s FIFA World Cup, which remains the highest attended single sport competition in the world. While football has certainly established itself as the “global game” it’s true meaning & purpose is an altogether individual affair, and one that each of us has fashioned out of personal experiences. In this piece I intend to explore what watching football means to me.

Like most people I was introduced to football by my father. He participated at numerous levels of the game both as a player & manager; therefore it was inevitable that his passion for football would rub off on me. He & my grandfather were avid Glasgow Rangers supporters, so anytime there was a game live on TV we’d all group together to tune in. Often I’d have more fun watching them during a live game; gesticulating toward the referee, twisted facial expressions at substitutions, reenacting head movements whenever there was a header toward goal….all of this was viewing gold during my formative years. Before my parents had stumped up for Sky television there was a liberal yet sparkling amount of games that were on terrestrial TV. Therefore we were locked and loaded whenever the time came to tune in for the match. Major competitions such as Italia 90, Euro 92 & USA 94 would see my father & I go on football binges, taking in the delights of daily games over prolonged periods of the summer. Then we progressed onto channel 4’s Football Italia coverage, not to mention the Scottish Premier League live games & English Cup Competitions that were starting to increase each year. Football soon became the epicenter of my world, but what was it about watching the game that gripped me? I can’t for a minute contemplate that it all started by analyzing the intricacies of Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan cover pressure system. Nor was it forming opinion on Aston Villa’s twin striker link up play between Dalian Atkinson & Dean Saunders. Watching Football was laying in wake for the spectacular moments….the goals, the controversy, the moments of magic. Being able to watch something happen live that would go down in history, that’s what I’d yearn for. I remember watching George Weah weave through the whole Verona team, while at AC Milan, to score one of the most spectacular goals I’d ever witnessed. I truly thought I was watching a football god at work, and better yet, I’d saw it happen Live! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDuZpma_Oxs).

As I grew older my spectrum of football would increase with the additions of Sky Television & Channel 5 in the summer 97. I remember beaming from ear to ear, acting as if it were some pseudo summer transfer coup I’d pulled off. As well as carrying all major British football competitions, Sky Sports covered the Spanish league which brought a new flavor to what was an already growing timetable. The delights of Rivaldo, Raul & Luis Enrique really gave me an insight into what technical football was all about. Eurosport, a channel which came in the Sky Sports package, boosted my football fix further providing coverage of all of Central Europe’s top leagues in a round up show, cunningly entitled Euro Goals. Channel 5 offered some further diversity with its weekly game packages from the Dutch Eredivisie, Major League Soccer from the USA, and the top leagues of both Argentina & Brazil. These games weren’t ever live and with the show airing between 1am & 5am it did present a challenge to the viewer to say the least! In the early 00’s I was afforded an opportunity to attend a Level 1 football coaching course, which was soon to shift how I watched football forever. Suddenly the games I was taking in each week went from a source of spectacle, to one of X’s & O’s and the search for deeper thinking. My first educator in football was current Annan FC manager Jim Chapman. Jim was a development officer for the Scottish FA, and ran coach education courses in the region where I lived. In the months to come I would take up a post working for Jim, but in those early encounters he would give me challenges to look out for. “Count how many times X midfielder scans the field” he’d say, or “Look at where the forward picks up the ball before he shoots”. All very basic stuff in the grand scheme of things, but it was this new connection that really lit a fire underneath me.

Moving into the new Millennium I had developed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of players. From those who filled the squads of Europe’s elite to those who were journeymen from a South American back water. I wanted to build up as much knowledge of the game as possible, and where better to start than its players? Sure there were a few snap judgments in there, but in the days before Youtube & Twitter the world was a much tougher place to source info! When I turned 16 I jumped onto the lowest possible rung of football, but I took the opportunity with both hands & soon descended into an unadulterated football junkie. Setanta Sports were the newest broadcast providers and they completed what was to be my cornucopia of football TV schedules. They brought along with them the Portuguese Primeira Liga, France’s Ligue 1 & a rejuvenated showing of the Italian Serie A. At this stage watching football had transformed into a world of note taking, tactical analysis, strategy breakdowns, and even the odd “What would I do here” scenario role play. Looking back it was such a shift from my early days of tuning into football. Sure I would react like anyone else toward a last minute winner or an underdog victory, but my endeavor was now to increase my understanding of the game through the search for deeper meaning. Why did the coach move that player there? Why is that strikers run always to the front post? How does that midfielder always seem un-marked when he arrives in the box? It was these types of questions that were fuelling my desire to learn. Each game became like an exam for me, a challenge. As the amount of games I watched began to increase, so did my application to learning. I’d fill up notebooks with endless reams of scribbles, all in the search for a firmer grip on what really was going on. I was fast developing my own opinions of the game & how I viewed its structure, but it was during this period that I developed one of the best skills we can acquire in life…..the ability to listen. I would ask everyone & anyone questions about the game. How they saw a specific substitution play out….how they felt the back four pressed…..which areas of the field a team centered possession through….all are examples of how I would transfer myself into their visual. Whether I agreed or not was irrelevant, for me it was like gaining access to a completely different camera angle, a new viewpoint or vantage.

15 years or so later & I still ask these same questions. I still search for deeper meaning, and I learn something new with every game that passes. That said, just because I watch a lot of football really doesn’t make me an expert. The beauty of this sport is that you’ve never cracked it. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out a new trend will appear, a rule change alters the flow & a new breed of player gravitates to the top thus changing how the game operates. When I really peel back the layers it’s the constant state of flux that makes football so intriguing to me. We each have our own opinions on the game, and rightfully so, it’s what will stimulate debate for decades to come. Football at its very core is individual expression; therefore how we interpret the game has to remain diverse & exclusive to how we see it with our own eyes. We should never be swayed by what others think, no matter how informed or educated they may be. This game belongs to us all, so take a moment to sit back & enjoy the show…..you’ll rarely be let down.

"It's better to go down with your own vision than with someone else's." Johan Cruyff